Graphic Match Cuts

It is well known that editing creates meaning. The order, assembly, and combination of the shots, all working together to convey more information than one shot on its own. But how many ways can a filmmaker cut from one shot to another? In reality, so many that you can’t put into numbers. So, when you hear the phrase match cut without any context, the concept is too general to have much significance.

Before digging deep into this video essay’s focus – the graphical match cut; we first need to understand the basis of this popular, yet artistic cut.

Let’s start by defining continuity editing. In editing, Continuity is “the way in which different parts of a film or television programme are joined together so that the action happens without any

A woman is getting ready to have a shower, she gets in and then and intruder appears – you probably know the rest. The blood flowing down the drain already signals the finality of the shower sequence in the 1960’s Psycho (Kolker). But it’s the next shot that really cements the hopelessness of what the viewer just witnessed. The shot of the drain slowly dissolves into the close up of Marion’s lifeless eye – as if to metaphorically suggest her life disappeared down that very drain.

This a good example of a graphic match cut between two shots that share matching visual elements such as shape, colour, size or frame composition – like the circular shape of the drain and Marion’s eye.

When it comes to graphic matches, the stronger the visual connection of the shots, the more convincing, noticeable, and smoother the transition. It is useful because it is another graceful way of relating two otherwise disconnected or disjointed shots. The visual similarities establish a palpable relationship between two shots and this in turn eases the transition

For instance, one of the most famous examples of this appears in Lawrence of Arabia when Lawrence blows out the match we cut to the sun rising over the horizon in the Arabian desert. The similar colour of the flame to the horizon in the next shot also produces the meaning that the match blowing out can represent his life in Britain ending and the new opportunity represented by the sunrise. In this case, the graphic match eases the transition between two very different geographical locations.

The temporal graphic match is instead used to jump forward or backwards in time. It works well for transitioning between the present day and a flashback because it temporal jump more fluid and seamless. A good example of this is seen in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. In this famous scene, a prehistoric primal discovers the destructive power of the bone of a deceased animal, which he then tosses high up into the air. This then turns into a twenty-first century space vessel revolving in space